UX & Product Designer

Experience: 13 yearsRetirement

My name is Carmel Hassan Montero, and I’ve been working in the software industry as a UX Designer for more than 12 years. I studied Computer Engineering at the University of Granada, and started my career as a Web Developer in 2006. My interest fortechnology and human-computer interaction drives my professional path since then.

During my work experience, I’ve played the role of a programmer, designer, leader, teacher, people manager, and consultant. Whichever my role could be I enjoy always getting my hands dirty with real design stuff to get my brain active, exercise my hands, and empathize with people.

I’m based in Málaga (Spain), where I’m actively involved in tech communities like Yes We Tech, and support the organization of events that promote diversity and equality.

I enjoy my biking/walking commuting to the office as well as the flexibility of working remotely whenever I need to. Out of work, I simply enjoy biking on weekends, running on weekdays and hanging out with friends and family anytime.

Experience

01.03.2017

Product Designer / UX Lead

Ebury – 2 years and a half (nowadays) – I lead a small team of 3 designers who are involved in any people-facing product (Website, Communications, Online platform, and Backend System). My first challenge was to deal with design debt. Defining a design system as a strategy to refactor and provide consistency. I’ve run user interviews and tests, sometimes as an interviewer, analysts, and/or planner.

01.02.2017

Teacher

Master Front-end Lemoncode – Editions I-VI – I find teaching a great knowledge experience. In this online master, I perform a 3-hour session to introduce key concepts about User Experience for developers. Every year I try to update examples with recent technologies and tools.

01.03.2015

Senior UX Specialist / UX Lead

ITRS – 2 years – I fell in love with Data working for this start-up company. I created the user interface concept of a real-time analytics platform after a deep analysis of competitors and industry standards. I discovered the power of quantitative user research analysing user interactions and followed an ‘eating-your-own-dog-food’ approach to visualise those metrics with the tool I helped to build, which inspired my article ‘Measuring UX with your own tools’.

01.01.2012

UX Lead Designer

CSC – 2 years 9 months – The challenge was to create a common culture of User-Centred Design for a big corporation, so I started thinking about design in a more strategic manner, collaborating with Product Managers to get to the appropriate audience. I created a detailed reference for standards, guidelines, and UI Components for desktop and mobile apps so developers around the globe could build seamlessly healthcare applications.

06.09.2009

UI/UX Designer

iSOFT (a CSC Company) – 2 years 3 months – When I joined to iSOFT, I was a junior designer working as part of a team of developers and architect. I had to handle product requirements definition working with people in Australia, India, UK and Spain. Thanks to the success of a small proof of concept, the team grew, and I was promoted. I could hire 4 new designers and 2 more front-end developers. Together we created the first UI framework in XAML and .Net to build healthcare solutions.

01.01.2009

Web Designer

Freelance – 8 months – I started working as a freelancer to save as much money as possible and decide my own path of working so I could finish my master degree studies. During this time I built web-based products using Drupal. I’ve created themes from scratch, prototyping and defining the information architecture of websites, and setting up Drupal sites. I spent almost 20% of the time looking for new projects and speaking with customers, which taught me to appreciate the value of good management skills.

01.04.2007

Web developer

Grupo Trevenque Kaplan – 1 year 8 months – This was my very first serious job as an engineer, I won’t forget the vast amount of things I learnt from my colleagues. I was developing cool Drupal modules in PHP while I fell in love with CSS and HTML. Working surrounded by designers made me appreciate the value and power of well designed and developed web interface.

01.02.2006

Internship

University of Granada – 9 months – During my first job opportunity as an intern, I finish my degree in Computer Engineering. I worked as a Drupal developer and PHP programmer for different departments at the University. It was a good practice of some of the knowledge acquired during my studies.

Pablo Fridlender – Development Manager en DXC Technology:Carmel is the greatest UX professional I have had the luck to work with. A very proactive person, always fully dedicated to achieve the best quality results and with the capacity of leading UX teams with team members playing different roles in an agile environment. During the time I worked with her, she was the key person defining the way an agile user centered methodology had to interface with an agile development team. Through her great communication and technical skills she always shows how a leader must behave to make people follow her. An indispensable leader to build a successful UX team.

My team mates

David Rundle – Software Engineer: Carmel is really passionate about UX, and this shows in the quality of her work. When designing, she would take into account all the key aspects and be able to provide solutions which we could work with. Carmel worked really closely with the team which yielded great results, and awesome looking software.

Sergio López Carulla – .Net Senior Developer: One of the best professionals with I had the pleasure to work. Fully dedicated to the world of UX and passionate about her job. Nice manager, knows how to organize and take the lead in design meetings. Good communicator, a pleasure to listen to.

David Aragonés Otero – Interaction and Information Designer for User Experience: As the lead of the Bluebird UX team at CSC Healthcare Division, Carmel did a great job leading us: scheduling tasks, defining our work methodology, conducting co-design sessions and checking deliverables quality. During that time she built a strong team who looked to her for guidance and direction. But the most important role she made was as a UX Evangelist. She spread the UX language in a development company based in traditional processes. She opened up bridges between managers, developers and designers following up a common goal, have a better experience for users in the healthcare realm. I’ll never forget the time we were working in a design studio with some developers. She inspired them to try to propose a solution and encouraged them to think out of the keyboard. Finally, we created a new and innovative control for our UI framework. Carmel did an excellent job and I would highly recommend her for any position. Be part of her team made me grow as a person and UX professional.

Contact me

Hi there!

I'm UX/Product Designer at Ebury. I have a chaotic side project called Cinefilica and founded the most interesting tech community in Málaga: Yes We Tech. I enjoy writing random thoughts on UX, Design, Technology and Society. Something I should know? Comment on my blog, Twitter or email me to carmel.hassan@gmail.com